Peter Mundell Ferry

Peter Ferry died peacefully in the early morning of September 17, 2024 surrounded by his wife, Carolyn O’Connor Ferry and his children, Lizzie and Griffin, after a 16-month struggle with Merkel Cell cancer. Pete and his brother John grew up in Parkersburg, West Virginia, where their father was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. Pete attended Parkersburg High School, but graduated from Von Steuben High School in Chicago after William and Mary Lewis Ferry moved the family there. Pete graduated from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, with a BA in English and received an MA in English Literature from Northwestern University. He started teaching to stay out of the Vietnam war, then edited textbooks at Rand McNally in the 1970s where he picked up a group of lifelong friends. He decided to go back to teaching and spent 27 years teaching English at Lake Forest High School in the Chicago suburbs. He dearly loved (most of) his students and colleagues at Lake Forest and treasured his time there, where he coached the forensics team and started a student foreign exchange program with Corinne Mostert of Segbroek College, a high school in the Netherlands, that is still carried on today and has meant so much to so many students. Pete thought of Corinne as his sister and made many dear friends in Holland. Pete loved to write and his stories have appeared in McSweeney's, OR, Fiction, Chicago Quarterly Review, StoryQuarterly, HyperText and Catamaran amongst other publications. He is a winner of an Illinois Arts Council Award for Short Fiction and has written two novels, Travel Writing and Old Heart, which won the Chicago Writers Association Novel of the Year award in 2015. Old Heart was adapted and turned into a stage play by the theatrical and movie producer Roger Rapoport, and it opened at the Redmond Theater in Detroit in May of 2022. Rapoport has also purchased the movie rights to Old Heart, and his adaptation is currently in production. Ferry’s short story Ike, Sharon and Me appeared in The Best American Mystery Stories 2017. His short story The Hitchcocks was named a Distinguished Story of 2023 by The Best American Short Stories. More than anything else, Pete loved spending time in a small wooded community on the shore of Lake Michigan, Palisades Park, in an old cottage he and his brother inherited from their father and his father before him. He played tennis, sipped a beer while watching the sunset and enjoyed the talent at Saturday Open Mike Nights. He loved gathering fallen wood and hand sawing it - for exercise during the summer and fuel during the spring and fall. His idea of a perfect bathing experience involved the lake and a bar of soap. Pete lost his son Asa in 2015 and his brother John in 2021. He is survived by his wife, Carolyn O’Connor Ferry, his children Elizabeth (Lizzie) and Griffin, his grandson, Atticus, daughter-in-law, Laura Heffington, sister-in-law Vicki Siegel Ferry, nephew Christopher (Rachel Beane) Ferry, great nephew and niece Nate and Nova Ferry, and his cat, the Dude. Pete is also survived on the O’Connor side by eleven sisters- and brothers-in-law, thirteen nieces and nephews and eleven great nieces and nephews, one of whom, Killian Ulysses Cole, was born just a few hours after his death. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Al-Van Humane Society in South Haven, Michigan, at al-van.org/donate. Their address is 07591 Blue Star Hwy #9769, South Haven, MI 49090. A memorial service will be planned at a later date.